Cat Power Artistfacts

January 21, 1972
She was born Charlyn Marie Marshall in Atlanta, Georgia. Charlyn adopted the nickname Chan in sixth grade.
Charlyn was the second child of Charlie Marshall, a blues musician and pianist, and Myra Lee Marshall (née Russell). She grew up in a chaotic, poor household with her father largely absent. Her parents divorced in 1979 after which Marshall's mom spent a lot of time in bars, dragging her two children along.
At the age of 20, Marshall moved to New York City and found a small basement studio where she could lay down music. Her first two albums, Dear Sir and Myra Lee Marshall, were recorded simultaneously there in December 1994.
In 2003, Marshall released You Are Free, which became the first charting Cat Power album, reaching #105 on the Billboard 200. However, she was going through a bad time, having just broken up with her first long-term boyfriend, runway model Daniel Currie, and was indulging in Jack Daniel's and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax from the moment she woke up.

"I was suffering from deep depression due to the loss of the love of my life," she recalled to The Independent. "It was an agonizing pain, so I chose to induce myself in as much alcohol as I could instead of choosing suicide. Yeah, I made a choice to live in a bottle."
Around the release of her seventh album, 2006's The Greatest, Marshall suffered a psychotic breakdown brought on by mental exhaustion and alcohol abuse which had left her feeling suicidal. She was briefly admitted to the psychiatric ward at Mount Sinai Medical Center & Miami Heart Institute and put on medication for bipolar disorder.
Marshall had a period of stability for several years after settling down with the actor Giovanni Ribisi. However in 2012 he left her for British model Agyness Deyn, and the devastated Marshall decamped to Malibu and started recording Sun. The music video for the track "Ruin" finds Marshall sporting a shorter haircut than before, having cut her locks following their split.
In 2014 Marshall found she was pregnant. She gave birth the following year to a son, Boaz, who appears on the cover of her Wanderer album.
Chan Marshall was once the face of Chanel. In 2006, Karl Lagerfeld asked her to model a Chanel line of jewelry after spotting her smoking outside the Mercer Hotel in New York.
Asked by Uncut magazine if she has a songwriting routine, Cat Power replied, "No, it's like a vomit. Not a nauseous feeling, it's like a telephone call from deep inside, knock on your inside door. When something comes to you like that I tend to just sit with it and play it over and over until I remember. And if I remember the next day, then I play it again. I start putting it in live places where I yarn it, thread it, hone it a little bit."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

More Songfacts:

If It Makes You HappySheryl Crow

"If It Makes You Happy" by Sheryl Crow is about the sour grapes some of her collaborators from her first album expressed to the media when they felt slighted.

YYZRush

The instrumental "YYZ" by Rush got its title from the transmitter code for Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto, near where the band is from.

Black WaterThe Doobie Brothers

The Doobie Brothers' swampy #1 hit "Black Water" is about the Mississippi River, evoking the rafting adventures Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn.

Against The WindBob Seger

Bob Seger's "Against The Wind" has the famous mind-bending line, "Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." Seger was going to cut it, but his Eagles buddies Glenn Frey and Don Henley told him it was the best line in the song.

Susie QCreedence Clearwater Revival

Creedence Clearwater Revival's first single was a cover of a rockabilly song called "Susie Q." When it became a hit, group leader John Fogerty went into a songwriting frenzy so they wouldn't be one-hit wonders, resulting in hits like "Proud Mary" and "Lodi."